12:15 p.m.: President Obama lands at Israel’s international airport and is received with an honor guard. President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lead the welcoming committee. President Obama speaks briefly and visits an Iron Dome battery. The President then helicopters to Jerusalem.

4:00 p.m.: Peres hosts President Obama at a ceremonial welcome, followed by a working session.

5:20 p.m.: Netanyahu hosts President Obama for the trip’s most substantive talks, through the late afternoon into the evening.

8:10 p.m.: Netanyahu and President Obama hold a joint press conference, then move to a working dinner and more talks, before President Obama retires to his suite at the nearby King David Hotel.

Thursday:

9:00 a.m.: President Obama visits the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, tours an exhibit showcasing Israeli innovations, and meets local high-tech entrepreneurs.

11:00 a.m.: President Obama travels to Ramallah, holds meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, delivers an address to young Palestinians.

4:40 p.m.: President Obama delivers the key public address of his visit at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center.

5:40 p.m.: The President meets with US diplomatic staff at the American Consulate in Jerusalem. He then returns to the President’s Residence, where Netanyahu joins him and Peres. In a late addition to the schedule, a pre-dinner meeting has also been slotted in for the President and Israel’s new opposition leader, Labor party chair Shelly Yachimovich.

8:00 p.m.: Peres hosts President Obama for a state dinner where he will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Distinction.

Friday:

8:40 a.m.: President Obama visits Mount Herzl and lays wreaths on the graves of Theodor Herzl and Yitzhak Rabin.

9:30 a.m.: Tours the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum.

12:00 p.m.: Visits the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

3 p.m: Says goodbye at an official send-off at the airport, with Peres leading the farewells.

Arrives Jordan, meets with King Abdullah II, holds a joint press conference. Rest of Jordan schedule to be confirmed.

Irish Times: Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said US president Barack Obama has ’reaffirmed his intention’ to return to Ireland for a second official visit.

The two leaders held the traditional annual St Patrick’s Day meeting at the White House in Washington today.

Following a private meeting with the president afterwards, the Taoiseach said Mr Obama had accepted an invitation to visit Ireland again but was unable to say if he would do so during his second term as president.

Jared Bernstein: On the Bill Maher show the other night, I pointed out that contrary to the talking point that government spending is spiraling out of control, it in fact went up only 0.6%, 2009-2012. Whenever I say that, I get emails from people who don’t believe it, and not just complaining conservatives. Many progressives can’t believe that’s the case given the hair-on-fire rhetoric about Obama’s alleged ongoing spending spree.

Norbrook: The Republican National Committee has released its analysis of what went wrong, and a path forward for the Party. It’s a long document, and I haven’t read it all (yet), a quick scan of it shows some ideas that might be helpful in pulling the party out of its current death spiral, although it does seem to be notably lacking in details and practical policy considerations. Still, it’s a start. But in looking through it, I see a major problem: The people who are currently holding office and running the party.

Michael Tomasky: I’m going to shock you, perhaps, by saying that I don’t think the Republican National Committee’s “Growth and Opportunity Project” document is a complete joke. Three or four decent ideas have been somehow smuggled into its 100 pages, and the party would be well advised to follow them. But what’s more interesting to me are the things that are not in there. The difficult topics are nearly all avoided. Now it could be that the GOP’s great minds are taking up these questions behind closed doors, and if so bully for them. But I somehow doubt it because to take these tougher questions on is to take on the party’s most rabid base, and who’s going to do that? The process of Republican change is going be what we might call a two-thirds Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and long.

NYT: Arizona’s Proposition 200, passed in 2004, prohibits local officials from registering any would-be voter who does not provide “satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship.” That requirement conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the Motor Voter Act, which set up a national registration system for federal elections.

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether states have the power under the federal law to add restrictions to voter registration. They clearly do not. The justices should reject Arizona’s law as invalid and avoid recreating the problem that the federal law was intended to fix.